Bridge Tolls
Advocacy Project

East River Bridge Tolls, Who Will Really Pay

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7. Income Progressivity

Opponents of bridge tolls sometimes argue that tolls will be “regressive” — that they will fall more heavily, relative to income, on people with lower incomes than on the well-off. This argument has a certain a priori plausibility; flat fees often are regressive in this sense. But the devil, as always, is in the details, especially given the oft-overlooked correlation between car ownership and household income in New York City.

To determine whether East River bridge tolls will be regressive, we analyzed a subset of U.S. Census data called PUMS (Public Use Microdata Samples) which is obtained from detailed surveys filled out by a sub-sample of the population. To keep the analysis manageable, we limited it to residents of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, who account for nearly two-thirds of regular East River Bridge users (see Table 1). Pending release of PUMS data from the 2000 Census, we employed 1990 data adjusted to 2002 income levels. (For details of the methodology and calculations in this section, see Toll Progressivity Calculations.)

We then divided all two million employed residents of the three boroughs into two groups: a small group, 79,000, who regularly drive a car, truck or van into Manhattan via an East River bridge; and a large group, 1,919,000, who get to work without doing so (either by driving on an MTA toll bridge or tunnel or by taking transit into Manhattan or by working in a borough or county other than Manhattan). Adjusted to 2002 levels using national-average wage growth, the average income of the small group of East River bridge-using commuters is $53,468 a year, while the average for the other group that doesn’t use an East River bridge to get to work is $39,132.

The difference between the average income of the two groups, $14,336 a year, is almost 10 times as great as the $1,510 in bridge tolls that a daily East River bridge user can expect to pay annually once the bridges are tolled (see Table 5).

This comparison can be refined in a number of ways:

• using medians rather than averages narrows the income difference between daily East River bridge users and other jobholders from the same boroughs, from $14,336 to $10,670;

• using after-tax rather than pre-tax income also shrinks the average income difference, from $14,336 to $9,548;

• carpooling: some East River bridge commuters now carpool, and more will do so to split the cost of tolls; with two in the car instead of one, the annual toll cost (the denominator in the ratio of income difference to toll cost) drops from $1,510 to $755;

• netting the toll “hit” by the jump in commuting costs for transit users, which will average $123/year when the fare hike takes effect, in May, likewise reduces the denominator of the ratio, from $1,510 for a solo commuter, to $1,387.

With these refinements, the ratio of the income differential (between East River bridge commuters and other workers) to a bridge commuter’s new annual toll cost, can be made to vary from as little as 5 to more than 20. But in any scenario, East River tolls will be paid primarily by people who are better-off than average. In addition, the tolls will disproportionately benefit lower-income citizens and families who depend heavily on city services. Far from being regressive, then, bridge tolls are in fact “doubly progressive.”

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